House Legislation Guarantees Internet Access for Those Affected by COVID-19
The House of Representatives has introduced new COVID-19 emergency response legislation to address the largest public health and economic calamity the United States has faced in generations. Like the crisis it is meant to address, the bill is massive. One provision deserves particular attention: guaranteeing free Internet access if...
Governments Shouldn’t Use “Centralized” Proximity Tracking Technology
Companies and governments across the world are building and deploying a dizzying number of systems and apps to fight COVID-19. Many groups have converged on using Bluetooth-assisted proximity tracking for the purpose of exposure notification. Even so, there are many ways to approach the problem, and dozens of proposals...
Court Upholds Public Right of Access to Court Documents
A core part of EFF’s mission is transparency and access to information, because we know that in a nation bound by the rule of law, the public must have the ability to know the law and how it is being applied. That’s why the default rule is that the public...
The Santa Clara Principles During COVID-19: More Important Than Ever
This blog post with co-authored with Spandana Singh of New America's Open Technology Institute, a Santa Clara Principles partner.As COVID-19 has spread around the world and online platforms have scrambled to adjust their operations and workforces to a new reality, company commitments to the Santa Clara Principles...
Understandable But Nonetheless Troubling: Facebook's Ban On In-Person Events
We're closely watching how Facebook enforces its newly-announced policy that limits speech by users who are organizing public protests. This policy is deserving of special attention since it effects free expression on two levels: the organization of the protest itself, and the speech about it. This new policy adds to...
The Patent Office Is “Adjusting” to a Supreme Court Ruling by Ignoring It
In 2014, the Supreme Court decided the landmark Alice v. CLS Bank case. The Court held generic computers, performing generic computer functions, can’t make something eligible for patent protection. That shouldn’t be controversial, but it took Alice to make this important limitation on patent-eligibility crystal clear.Last year, the Patent Office...
Unix and Adversarial Interoperability: The ‘One Weird Antitrust Trick’ That Defined Computing
The Unix operating system was created at Bell Labs in 1969. Today, it rules the world. Both Android and iOS are flavors of Unix. So is MacOS. So is GNU/Linux in all its flavors, like Ubuntu and Debian. So is Chrome OS. Virtually every "smart" gadget you own is running...
Second Paraguay Who Defends Your Data? Report: ISPs Still Have a Long Way Towards Public Commitments to Privacy and Transparency
Keeping track of ISPs’ commitments to their users, today Paraguay’s leading digital rights organization TEDIC is launching its second edition of ¿Quién Defiende Tus Datos? (Who Defends Your Data?), a report in collaboration with EFF. Transparent practices and firm privacy commitments are particularly crucial right now. During times of...
Cryptoparty Ann Arbor: A Case Study in Grassroots Activism
Using Drones to Fight COVID-19 is the Slipperiest of All Slopes
As governments search in vain for a technological silver bullet that will contain COVID-19 and allow people to safely leave their homes, officials are increasingly turning to drones. Some have floated using them to enforce social distancing, break up or monitor places where gatherings of people are occurring,...
